Published August 21, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Minimal Pair Perception and the Salience of Phonological Features in Turkish Speakers of English

Authors/Creators

Description

This study explores the sound discrimination responses of Turkish speakers of English through a diagnostic listening test administered in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting, examining their perceptions of minimal pair (MP) similarities or distinctions. The findings reveal that participants accurately marked a large majority of MPs as the same or different. However, error frequencies varied across items, with some placed in medium to very high error ranges. Errors involving vowels and consonants in these ranges were observed to be evenly distributed, with neither category outweighing the other. It was observed that salient differences among segmentals played a more prominent role in successfully distinguishing MPs in the low error range, while subtle differences, often harder to catch, contributed to higher error rates. Multiple contributing factors including participants’ first language (L1) seemed to interact in complex ways and influenced participants’ performances of sound discrimination. The study identifies several high functional load (FL) MPs in the medium to very high error ranges, highlighting their crucial role in word differentiation and meaning construction. The results also suggest the need for tailored teaching addressing specific challenges and nuanced distinctions, as well as prioritizing high FL pairs in instruction to enhance learners' communicative competence and intelligibility.

Files

66.Uzun, T..pdf

Files (640.0 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:3cd2f246f832fbdcd30ced88d1b8a647
640.0 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Dates

Accepted
2024-02-06

References

  • Alnafisah, M., Goodale, E., Rehman, I., Levis, J., & Kochem, T. (2022). The impact of functional load and cumulative errors on listeners' judgments of comprehensibility and accentedness. System, 110, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2022.102906 Arıkan, A., & Yılmaz, A. F. (2020). Pre-service English language teachers' problematic sounds. International e-Journal of Educational Studies (IEJES), 4(7), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.31458/iejes.594715 Avery, P., & Erlich, S. (1992). Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford University Press. Baker, A. (2006). Ship or sheep? An intermediate pronunciation course. Cambridge University Press. Bardakçı, M. (2015). Turkish EFL pre-service teachers' pronunciation problems. Educational Research and Reviews, 10(16), 2370-2378. https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2015.2396 Barlow, J. A., & Gierut, J. A. (2002). Minimal pair approaches to phonological remediation. Seminars in Speech and Language, 23(1), 57-67. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2002-24969 Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. M. (1988). Examination of perceptual reorganization for nonnative speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 14(3), 345-360. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.14.3.345 Bradlow, A. R., Akahane-Yamada, R., Pisoni, D. B., & Tohkura, Y. (1999). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: Long-term retention of learning in perception and production. Perception & Psychophysics, 61(5), 977-985. Brown, A. (1988). Functional load and the teaching of pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly 22(4), 593-606. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587258 Carr, P. (2008). A glossary of phonology. Edinburgh University Press. Catford, J. C. (1987). Phonetics and the teaching of pronunciation: a systemic description of English phonology. In J. Morley (Ed.), Current perspectives on pronunciation: Practices anchored in theory (pp. 87–100). TESOL. Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2017). Teaching pronunciation: A coursebook and a reference guide (2nd Ed.). Cambridge University Press. Demirezen, M. (2005). Rehabilitating a fossilized pronunciation error: The /v/ and /w/ contrast by using the audio articulation method in teacher training in Turkey. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 1(2), 183-192. Demirezen, M. (2008). The /æ/ and /ʌ/ phonemes as fossilized pronunciation errors for Turkish English language teachers and students: Undoing the fossilized pronunciation error. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 4(2), 73-82. Demirezen, M. (2010). The causes of the schwa phoneme as a fossilized pronunciation problem for Turks. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 1567–1571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.237 Derwing, T. M. (2023). An overview of pronunciation teaching and training. In U. K. Alves & J. I. A. Albuquerque (Eds.), Second language pronunciation: Different approaches to teaching and training (pp. 399-412). De Gruyter Mouton. Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2015). Pronunciation fundamentals: Evidence-based perspectives for L2 teaching and research. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Ergenç, İ. (2002). Konuşma dili ve Türkçenin söyleyiş sözlüğü. Multilingual. Ergenç, İ., & Bekar Uzun, İ. (2017). Türkçenin ses dizgesi: Ses, ünlüler, ünsüzler, konuşma organları. Seçkin. Flege, J. E. (1988). The production and perception of foreign language speech sounds. In H. Winitz (Ed.), Human communication and its disorders: A review (pp. 224-401). York Press. Flege, J. E. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 233-277). York Press. Flege, J. E. (2003). A method for assessing the perception of vowels in a second language. In E. Fava & A. Mioni (Eds.), Issues in clinical linguistics (pp. 19-43). Unpress. Gökgöz-Kurt, B. (2023). The perception of the English bilabial glide phoneme /w/ among Turkish learners of L2 English: A preliminary study on success and contributing factors. International Journal of Language Academy, 11(4), 208-224. https://doi.org/10.29228/ijla.72323 Haghigi, M., & Rahimy, R. (2017). The effect of L2 minimal pairs practice on Iranian intermediate EFL learners' pronunciation accuracy. International Journal of Research in English Education, 2(1), 42-48. https://doi.org/10.18869/acadpub.ijree.2.1.42 Isbell, D. R. (2020). Diagnostic language assessment for L2 pronunciation: A worked example. In O. Kang, S. Staples, K. Yaw, & K. Hirschi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th pronunciation in second language learning and teaching conference, (pp. 127–140). Iowa State University Kang, O., & Kermad, A. (2018). Assessment in second language pronunciation. In O. Kang, R. I. Thomson, J. M. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of contemporary English pronunciation (pp. 511-526). Routledge. Kelly, G. (2012). How to teach pronunciation (14th Ed.). Pearson Longman. King, R. D. (1967). Functional load and sound change. Language, 43(4), 831-852. https://doi.org/10.2307/411969 Kissling, E. M. (2014). What predicts the effectiveness of foreign-language pronunciation instruction? Investigating the role of perception and other individual differences. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 70(4), 532–558. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.2161 Knoch, U. (2017). What can pronunciation researchers learn from research into second language writing? In T. Isaacs & P. Trofimovich (Eds.), Second language pronunciation assessment: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 54-71). Multilingual Matters. Levis, J. M. (2018). Intelligibility, oral communication, and the teaching of pronunciation. Cambridge University Press. Levis, J. M., & Cortes, V. (2008). Minimal pairs in spoken corpora: Implications for pronunciation assessment and teaching. In C. A. Chapelle, Y. R. Chung, & J. Xu (Eds.), Towards adaptive CALL: Natural language processing for diagnostic language assessment (pp. 1197-208). Iowa State University. Levis, J. M., & Barriuso, T. A. (2012). Nonnative speakers' pronunciation errors in spoken and read English. In J. M. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Social factors in pronunciation acquisition, Proceedings of the 3rd pronunciation in second language learning and teaching conference, (pp. 187-194), Iowa State University. Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (2006). The functional load principle in ESL pronunciation instruction: An exploratory study. System, 34, 520-531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2006.09.004 Przedlacka, J. (2018). An overview of phonetics for language teachers. In O. Kang, R. I. Thomson, & J. M. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of contemporary English pronunciation (pp. (39-57). Routledge. Putra, T. K., & Rochsantiningsih, D. (2018). Improving students' pronunciation ability in fricative sounds through minimal pair drill. English Education Journal, 7(1), 26-36. Roach, P. (1992). Introducing phonetics. Penguin English. Rogerson-Revell, P. (2018). English vowels and consonants. In O. Kang, R. I. Thomson, & J. M. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of contemporary English pronunciation (pp. 93-121). Routledge. Suzukida, Y., & Saito, K. (2021). Which segmental features matter for successful L2 comprehensibility? Revisiting and generalizing the pedagogical value of the functional load principle. Language Teaching Research, 25(3) 431-450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168819858246 The Jamovi Project (2022). Jamovi. (Version 2.3) [Computer Software]. https://www.jamovi.org Trask, R. L. (1996). A dictionary of phonetics and phonology. Routledge. Uzun, T. (2022). The salient pronunciation errors and intelligibility of Turkish speakers in English. MEXTESOL Journal, 46(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.61871/mj.v46n1-9 Uzun, T. (2024). Perception of prosodic speech features: final intonation and word stress for EFL learners. Uluslararası Dil, Edebiyat ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi (UDEKAD), 7 (2), 212-223. https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.1449612 Valenzuela, M. G., & French, P. (2023). Production of English vowel contrasts in Spanish L1 learners: A longitudinal study. Loquens, 10(1-2), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2023.v10.i1-2